Morningstar Announces Methodology and Categories for Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence in Europe and Asia

March 3, 2022

LONDON, 03 March 2022 -- Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, today announced updated methodology for the Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence in 13 markets in Europe and Asia.

The awards will take place in March and April 2022 across 13 markets, which include Belgium, France, Germany Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and the UK, in Europe and Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan in Asia.

The Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence program is designed to recognise funds and asset managers that have served investors well over the long term and which Morningstar’s Manager Research team believes will be able to deliver strong risk-adjusted returns in the longer term.

Under the new methodology, there are three types of Morningstar awards: the Morningstar Category Awards, the Morningstar Asset Manager Awards, and the Morningstar Asset Manager – Sustainable Investing Awards.

“These awards are designed to recognise the industry's top-notch fund offerings and investor-friendly firms. The streamlined categories emphasise our analysts’ qualitative, forward-looking views during the selection process across individual fund markets. Additionally, with the introduction of the Asset Manager –Sustainable Investing Award, we seek to recognise asset managers that have built strong ESG capabilities, have proven track records of investing in dedicated ESG resources, and are integrating sustainability principles into their investment programs,” said Wing Chan, Morningstar’s Head of Manager Research, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Morningstar has granted annual awards to accomplished portfolio managers since 1988. The Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence winners are chosen based on research and in-depth qualitative evaluation by Morningstar's manager research group. For more information about and the dates for each market of the Morningstar Awards for Investing Excellence, visit https://go.morningstar.com/Morningstar-Awards.

Methodology

These awards are determined by a combination of risk-adjusted medium- to long-term performance track records and Morningstar’s forward-looking rating for funds, the Morningstar Analyst Rating™, complemented by the Morningstar Quantitative Rating™ (MQR), when necessary. The MQR is a quantitative rating that seeks to emulate the Analyst Rating and uses the same Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral, Negative scale as the former. The Morningstar Asset Manager – Sustainable Investing Awards are determined by a combination of Morningstar’s ESG Commitment Level for asset managers, along with Morningstar’s sustainability metrics for funds and Manager Research analysts’ knowledge of the fund groups they assess in the context of the Morningstar Analyst Rating for funds.

The full methodology for the awards is available here.

About Morningstar, Inc.

Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, and institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $265 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Dec. 31, 2021. The Company has operations in 29 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on Twitter @MorningstarInc.

Morningstar's Manager Research Group consists of various wholly owned subsidiaries of Morningstar, Inc. including, but not limited to, Morningstar Research Services LLC. Analyst Ratings are subjective in nature and should not be used as the sole basis for investment decisions. Analyst Ratings are based on Morningstar's Manager Research Group's current expectations about future events and therefore involve unknown risks and uncertainties that may cause such expectations not to occur or to differ significantly from what was expected. Analyst Ratings are not guarantees nor should they be viewed as an assessment of a fund's or a fund's or separately managed account's underlying securities' creditworthiness. This press release is for informational purposes only; references to securities or a separately managed account investment strategy in this press release should not be considered an offer or solicitation to buy or sell the securities or to invest in accordance with that strategy.

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